Best Posts in Thread: Lets talk about Meepcraft

*Disclaimer I'm not trying to hurt the feelings of current, past, w.e staff members or players.*
These are just my opinions and views on the server.

-Staff
Oh boy, the staff of MeepCraft are something different. Of my experience with staff, the majority is good. But you'll sometimes have a few people that do something stupid and it'll ruin their rep, and everyone else's on the staff team.

Most people don't realize that staff don't get paid for what they do, if anything they're paying you as a player for their time. In some cases staff will help or pay for an entire refund request out of their own pockets. Staff members are human beings too, they wouldn't be on the server if they didn't like it. Yes you have a few staff members that do bad things and abuse the system, but the majority are good.

Admins:
Admins do more things in a single day than most staff members due in their entire careers. Admins are the people that keep this server running, keep other staff members in line, help keep mini-games, new content, existing content up and running. Not all hero's wear capes. Admins have been getting an extremely bad rep lately, Not replying to Architect trials, not dealing with player issues that require admins etc. People need to understand that Admins have full time jobs in real life. They aren't being paid to do their jobs on MeepCraft, they're volunteering their own time to help the server. If you're trying to contact an Admin about a serious issue that even a SuperMod has suggested, be patient. Please, they're trying their best. Everybody is trying their best.

Helpers:
Most helpers that get accepted for interview could be questioned, . . most of the time. They usually turn out fine and are a great help to the community, but every so often you'll have a couple that are just extremely annoying or rude in /g. There are usually 20+ helper applications at a time on the applications page, please take the time to actually go through them all.

Economy:
The economy is shit. Most of you would disagree but you'd be wrong. Everything is nerfed, hoppers, villager breeding, farms, mobs spawning, etc. You can get free default diamond armor sets from the dungeon, wild chest, or just random chest in general. Nerfing villager breeding only made it so, that players who already have them wouldn't have any competition, it essentially made a monopoly on villager trading. You have these players that have 30 double chest full of Diamonds, Gold, Diamond armor, level 30 enchantment books etc stored away, not doing anything with them because they don't have any value.

Keeping items stuck at a fixed value isn't how to run an Economy. Keeping Diamonds at 400 meebles only gives them a value of 400 meebles, You can basically make a god pickaxe, shovel, axe etc with less than 2-3k meebles. Nothing has value on the server anymore, it's not interesting. Back 3 years ago when gold, diamonds emeralds etc would fluctuate in value it made things a lot more interesting. Waiting for that item to go low, invest in it, then sell when it goes up. That is how economy's work. Instead of spending $3,000 for a garbage spawn, take money out of the eco to pay already existing server architects. Take money out of the eco to pay staff members. Give staff members pay checks, give them a reason to play on the server. ''Your kindness is more than enough for us''. Ye no one is buying that. Obviously something's not working, and if we don't start making changes we're not going to go anywhere but into the ground.

Towns:
Ahh, towns. The main topic of discussion everyone's been talking about for the past couple of months. Towns are the main source of income for the server. Towns are the reason MeepCraft is ''unique''. Towns Alpha started out great, towns dungeons, mob spawners etc. Then Towns Beta came around. Unique landscape, 1.8 release etc. When I log on during the day, I always see more than half if not 3/4 the amount of players in towns Beta and not Alpha. Sometimes I'll see 3/4 of the player population on the server at that time in towns Beta. I see towns as a reference to iPhones, Towns Alpha is like your iPhone 1, semi popular, was great at the time it came out. Then Beta came out, ''the iPhone 2.'' More than double the amount of players in Beta than alpha 90% of the time. Now there's all of this discussion about adding Towns Delta. ''iPhone 4'' we skipped 3.

Spending,Marketing:
We're an Towny server, it's time we started making more content for towns, more content for donors. Stop making new mini-games, stop investing thousands of donor money for spawns when we already have server Architects that applied for the position in the first place. We need to stop paying $2,000 for some kid to play a mini-game on our server, ye sure we get 300+ more players on the server for about a week. But the $2,000 is just crazy. I understand that there isn't a lot of options when it comes to marketing, but putting the money towards development and content IMO is the better way to go.

Ranks:
Ranks, Ranks, Ranks. Ranks are strange for this server. First one starts at $10, last one is $320. You could literally feed a family for a month with $320. (if you don't go get fast food every day.) I could think of a dozen better things to spend $320 on than a rank for a server. IMO meepcraft doesn't offer enough content from the server and via donor ranks to make Ultimate worth $320. Not how everything is right now, everything is literally nerfed. Wow you paid $320 for the /fly command. This would be great, if there was more to do in Towny with it, if there was more in the actual server to do.

Ranks in mini-games should only matter to an extent. Games like infected, Halo, CTF should have donor perks. But games like Boomo, Skyblock, and UHS shouldn't. You're all starting from nothing, It wouldn't be fair for non donors. But this doesn't mean you can't have exclusive donor items in the games. Items such as Armor, cool skins or something.

Architects:
Players that wish to apply for an Architect position usually have to wait 2-4 weeks for a response on whether or not they've been accepted for a trial, or denied. Architects in the past had to be asked by the server owner for the position, which could take weeks if not months to hear back from. But now that you can apply to become an Architect, it shouldn't take months to hear an actual response. And the fact that Admins have to set the player up with perms to do their ''trial'' is ridiculous. Even after waiting months for a response, you could wait 1-2 more weeks before actually getting the chance to start your trial.

For the love of god, don't start a flame war in the comments, these are just my views and opinions on the server. I will edit this and add more as I go.

The Community:
Oh yes, that's right people. That is you. The Community of MeepCraft is unique to the MeepCraft server. The fact that players from 4 if not 5 years ago are still playing on this server has to say something. You guys, us* are the reason we keep coming back. Sure you have a few not so sharp tools in the shed, but it doesn't matter. We stick together, and strive on.

Lately I've been seeing a lot of hate towards one another and the server. ''MeepCraft is dead, just quit already.'' ''We're not going to become popular again, just quit trying.'' etc etc
If you're going to have that kind of negativity about the server then why tf do you still play? ''I play for the community''. No you play for the attention you're trying to get, just stfu. I understand MeepCraft use to have 1000+ players on daily, and now we average 100-130. That's a 100 player decrease in less than a month.

 

I think this is the first time I've ever agreed with this guy, but this is essentially the answer.

When MeepCraft focused on towns, it prospered, as evidenced by player counts.

When MeepCraft has continually tried to become a hub server, it's only dropped players, and failed to attract more.

If you have all your experience in selling cars, why in the world would you then try to sell wacky wavy inflatable arm flailing tube men?

Staff retention hinges on some sort of compensation; the workload is too much for a volunteer gig, especially one that earns you a good trashing regularly.

 

Here's an idea: Why don't you stop making long threads going over things we've discussed 100 times already, and actually try and do something about the problem.

 

When I became an admin I have 1 goal in my role as Admin, That is to bring Meepcraft back to Towny server.
With a few mini games. Thank you for the input and I'll look into this post more as i have the time.

I'll tell you this, we do have a plan in the works

 

Let me bring some perspective as a fairly new player. *This is no way intended as hate towards Fuzzlr, honestly* however, I like it as a player when Server owners interact with their players. If you look at Fuzzlr's page there is very little activity or postings, and when there are postings they are big server announcements, but not social interacting with the players.

Personally it puts me off. Like I said no disrespect, just my thoughts

 

$320 is already pushing it way to far for a rank on a minecraft server.

 

4 and a decimal years. There was some rough patches from what some people say.

Right now, I don't think we can really consider ourselves to be an economy server like we used to be. Lots of fluctuation in pricing and a lot of exchange in meebles between players. You simply don't see that really anymore. I think if we saw more interaction between players and pricing, it would be a different story. Once upon a time, there was a wipe of people who fell below a certain balance. All you had to do was vote one day and you would have been fine. That and just inactive players. There was also the total x% wipe of everyone to get the amount of meebles in the economy down, which did help and it made people want to get back to where they were. However, does it really matter how many meebles are in the economy right now? It did when gold fluctuated with it. It did when diamonds were normally based off of the eco. Nowadays, it's just people and people who have money. So, I think if the integration of a fluctuating bank came back, it would be healthy, but that's just my thought.

I think the move to majority of chest shops was good at the time, but I don't know if it's the best for our current position. You either don't know of the shops, or the shops are full and many people refuse to clean them out. Many people base pries off of what you can pay for in Admin shop when the Admin shop is really low selling prices and really high buying prices. I get that it is to get people to interact in chest shops. However, I'd rather sell to the Admin shop than spending 15-45 minutes looking for a shop that will buy what I'm selling.

As a few people have said, we need to focus on one aspect at a time, get that up and running smoothly for a bit, and then start on other projects. If you spread yourself too thin with projects, not much can get done.

Staff positions seem more and more like unpaid internships. The idea of paying staff has come up numerous times. However, lots of discussions have led it to be, "We shouldn't be paid," or "You should just do the work because you signed up for it." It leads to lots of competition in the staff team, and everyone seems to think that competition is bad. Competitions can be healthy and they can keep people on their toes and more active. I wish staff had a benefit to it. There's the benefit of experience and amazing friendships, but other than that, the server benefits more from you being there. It's not always a win-win scenario.

With the idea of just staff in general, I think there has been a lot of flack between ex-staff members and current staff members with a whole lot of bs "he said/she said" stuff that really could stop. Calling out people for not saying the exact truth and stuff. People have their own opinions. You can be a friendly person and say that you are sorry they felt that way and wish they had spoken up and to have some awesome adventures in life. There is no reason that those threads need to keep being flame wars between (normally) Admins+ ("+") and ex-staff. Thank them for their time and move on. You don't need to always defend yourself. Not everything you read or write is always true, and it's mostly opinion based. So, get over it.

I think there's a lot to be done, and people realize that. It's an overwhelming process to do. You have x, y, and z projects to do while maintaining morale in and out of the team, keeping up with modreqs, living a healthy life, and so much more. Staff do deserve more credit where it is due, and I don't think people need to call out where mistakes are made. It happened, move on.

I thin what really puts some people off is our front page as well. The scrolling headlines are SO old. Pictures aren't of new spawn. It'd be really cool to get an "updated look" from the updates going on.

A lot of stuff comes down to able-bodied techs. There are a lot of people who probably could do or help dblo if they had any insight to what dblo did. There are several people who are capable to understand what to look at and try to fix. I think if there were examples (basic ones) on what a tech should be able to do, there would be a lot more people willing and wanting to apply. When you look at recent applications for techs, you see people with YEARS and several known languages. That puts people into a "oh, I can't apply because I'm not as good as them" mentality.

@marshallmafers
The only thing I think I disagree with you on is the $320 can feed a family for a month. Normal families are 4-5 people roughly. Which is $2 a day for meals. It depends on where you live, but it's normal cost is about $10-$20 a day per person depending on the foods.

There is an easier way to vote, but a lot of people only know how to vote that way. If you go about that way, it can take almost 5-10 minutes. Which is a hastle. I just find myself clicking vote on forums, opening all the sites in a tab, and then opening up /vote in game.

 

Add a new rank, with what perks??
Supreme and ult already don't have enough perks.

 

To modify my idea now: make /vote link to the site voting page.
I hardly play Meep but the idea was that voting is an interference to gameplay when it really doesn't need to be.